Google Guidehttp://www.googleguide.com
Making Searching Even EasierSun, 16 Dec 2012 23:19:03 +0000http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.7enWhere and When Nancy Blachman will be Speakinghttp://www.googleguide.com/talks.html
http://www.googleguide.com/talks.html#commentsThu, 04 Jan 2007 21:21:53 +0000adminAppendixhttp://www.googleguide.com/where-nancy-blachman-speaking-102Below are the dates and locations where Nancy Blachman will be speaking followed by descriptions of her talks.

Google is so easy to use, why attend this presentation? If you’re like many people, you use only a small number of Google’s services and features. Learn how to go beyond Google’s deceptively plain interface and take advantage of many shortcuts and underutilized capabilities. For example, get driving directions by entering a US street address into Google’s search box. Need a US Phone number or address? Just enter a company or person’s name and a city, state, or zip code in the standard web search box. Enter a query even if Google’s home page isn’t in your browser from Google’s Toolbar. Personalize your Google home page with weather forecasts, news headlines, traffic reports or other helpful information. If you aren’t sure whether a word is hyphenated, search for it with a hyphen, e.g., [ long-term ]; you’ll get more results. Find synonyms by preceding the term with a ~, which is known as the tilde or synonym operator, e.g., [ google ~guide ] finds guides, tip, help, and tutorials on using Google. Search by example with Google Sets. For a quick summary of some of Google’s features, visit the Google Guide cheat sheet. The more you know about how Google works and its capabilities, the better it can serve your needs.

What Google Can Do For Your Website

How can you get more visitors to your website? Learn how from Nancy Blachman, author and developer of Google Guide, an online tutorial and reference, which over half of its visitors find directly from Google searches.

Nancy Blachman will share her experiences in designing, developing, and promoting Google Guide, www.googleguide.com, which is now the top result for queries including [ Google tutorial ], [ Google guide ], [ using Google ], [ Google stock symbol ], and [ Google favorite features ]. In this presentation, Nancy will cover creating content for your website, linking to search results, getting your site listed in Google, improving your site’s page rank, publicizing and advertising your website and generating revenue from AdSense.

Power Googling: Getting What you Want from Google

Google is easy to use, but the more you know about how it works, its features, its capabilities, and how it displays results, the better it can serve your needs. Learn how to go beyond Google’s deceptively plain interface and take advantage of underutilized capabilities and shortcuts.

In this presentation, Nancy Blachman will show

how to select terms and search (more effectively)

how Google interprets your query

what’s included with your results

how Google works

how to use “advanced” search features, even undocumented ones.

My Favorite Features

Google is so easy to use, why attend Nancy Blachman’s presentations? If you’re like many people, you use only a small number of Google’s services and features. Learn how to go beyond Google’s deceptively plain interface and take advantage of many shortcuts and underutilized capabilities. For example, get driving directions by entering a US street address into Google’s search box. If you aren’t sure whether a word is hyphenated, search for it with a hyphen, e.g., [ long-term ]; you’ll get more results. Find synonyms by preceding the term with a ~, which is known as the tilde or synonym operator, e.g., [ google ~guide ] finds guides, tips, help, and tutorials on using Google. For a quick summary of some of Google’s features, visit the Google Guide cheat sheet. The more you know about how Google works and its capabilities, the better it can serve your needs.

tags (keywords): No Tags

]]>http://www.googleguide.com/talks.html/feed/For the Presshttp://www.googleguide.com/press.html
http://www.googleguide.com/press.html#commentsMon, 25 Dec 2006 16:32:17 +0000adminAppendixhttp://www.googleguide.com/for-the-press-99You can find the history of Google Guide and information about Nancy Blachman, the author, on www.googleguide.com/history.html.

Need a photo or graphic for a news story, link, or ad? I’m pleased to offer several images. If you prefer a different format or size, please use our contact form.

Before translating anything, read Google Guide as if you were a novice.

Check all the examples on your local version of Google. Some features work only on the US version and other features work differently from the US version. For example, queries with accents match more results on Google.dk (the Danish version of Google) than on the English version (Google.com)

Localize your examples. The examples in Google Guide are intended for US and English speakers. Change the examples to appeal to your audience.

Consider separating “need to know” from “nice to know.” When I made the Danish Google Guide, I first described what users need to do and then why. In the Danish version, what’s nice-to-know, appears in sections entitled “Understand, ” e.g., “Understand News-Search,” “Understand Image-Search,” “Understand Google.”

Though Google Guide focuses exclusively on Google, there are great features in other search engines, e.g., Yahoo for searching news (at least in Scandinavia) and Teoma for clustering. In your translation, mention superior features available in other search engines. Hopefully Google will soon offer comparable or even better capabilities.

Select examples that will not go out of date.

Since the web and Google’s algorithms and features constantly evolve and Google doesn’t publicize all their enhancements, keep abreast of new features and capabilities by reading Blogs and websites written by search engine experts, such as Tara Calishain’s Research Buzz, Gary Price’s Resource Shelf, and Search Engine Watch.

Web Mastering

If you don’t have screen-capture software, consider using Irfan View. It’s free and easy to use.

Consider including navigation menus on both the left and the right sides of each page. I use left menus for keeping the overview and navigating and the right menus for “fun stuff”, including helpful links, explanations, and dictionary definitions.

Make a list of the different examples of links to search results that you use in the guide, similar to the links included in Linking to Search Results. It’s easier to copy a link than to create a link. There are a lot of examples and you may forget how to create them.

After You’ve Translated Google Guide

Encourage your colleagues and friends to review your guide to find typos and mistakes and make suggestions for improving its readability and accuracy. Create an acknowledgments page with the names of the people who were helpful to you.

Get novices to check whether your guide is understandable to new Google users. If they don’t follow what you say, others probably won’t either.

]]>http://www.googleguide.com/translation_advice.html/feed/Acknowledgmentshttp://www.googleguide.com/acknowledgments.html
http://www.googleguide.com/acknowledgments.html#commentsMon, 25 Dec 2006 16:29:53 +0000adminAppendixwordpresshttp://www.googleguide.com/acknowledgments-97First, I offer thanks to Jerry Peek of Sites4People.com for suggesting that I write a book about how to search with Google.

I especially thank Tasha Bergson-Michelson of To The Point Research, Earl Crabb, Pauline Facciano, Thomas Galloway, Joy Li, Milton Peek, Naomi Pitcairn, Mark Seiden, and Google Answers researchers (most of whom I know by their handles) Angy-ga, Byrd-ga, Crabcakes-ga, Omnivorous-ga, Serenata-ga, Voila-ga, and Robert Skelton for providing a wealth of advice for making this tutorial more accurate and readable.

I thank Fritz Schneider and Eric Fredricksen, with whom I wrote How to Do Everything with Google, for providing me ideas of what to include in this tutorial. I’m also grateful to Matt Vance, author of www.minezone.org for suggesting that I develop a Google Advanced Operator cheat sheet, to Hamish Reid for making Google Guide easier to navigate, and my father, Nelson Blachman, for asking questions that encouraged me to explore and learn more about how Google works and for reviewing numerous drafts. I thank Jerry Peek for joining me on this project.

I thank David desJardins, my husband, for suggesting topics to include, answering my questions, and reviewing early versions of this tutorial. Last, but not least, I thank Louis and Sarah for their big hugs and kisses when I wasn’t working on this Google tutorial.

]]>http://www.googleguide.com/creative_commons_license.html/feed/Submitting Feedbackhttp://www.googleguide.com/feedback.html
http://www.googleguide.com/feedback.html#commentsMon, 25 Dec 2006 16:26:37 +0000adminAppendixhttp://www.googleguide.com/submitting-feedback-95We sincerely hope that Google Guide helps you become (more) proficient in using Google. We have tried to anticipate your questions and problems. Please let us know if we have missed something or if you have corrections or suggestions for improving Google Guide by using our online contact form. We welcome all comments, including answers to the following questions.

What was useful in Google Guide?

What was confusing in Google Guide?

What would you like to see added to Google Guide?

How much time have you spent on Google Guide?

We would appreciate hearing from you. Feedback, both positive and negative, motivates us to improve Google Guide.

If Google Guide is helpful to you, please tell other Google users about it, and if you have a website, please add a link to Google Guide’s home page, www.googleguide.com. Feel free to use the following code, which displays the Google Guide logos, which link to Google Guide’s home page.

(120 x 90 pixels)

(615 x 57 pixels)

tags (keywords): No Tags

]]>http://www.googleguide.com/feedback.html/feed/Google Guide in the Presshttp://www.googleguide.com/gg_press.html
http://www.googleguide.com/gg_press.html#commentsMon, 25 Dec 2006 16:25:09 +0000adminAppendixhttp://www.googleguide.com/google-guide-in-the-press-94WebTalkGuys Radio Show, March 20, 2004Google 101: How to search more effectively on the popular Website A conversation with Nancy Blachman, co-author of “How to Do Everything with Google.”
By Dana Greenlee, co-host WebTalk Radio 3/20/04

This site, which I found by accident, is wonderful. Thank you for creating it. I will be referring my students to your site as a resource to supplement our classroom work on Google features.

–Pramod, Ottawa, April 14, 2007

This is a GREAT tutorial. Boy, I have been missing a lot by not knowing all the ways to use Google! Thanks a lot!!

–Dorothy Bullock, April 14, 2007

There are a lot of cool Google tips and hacks floating around, some of which I’ve mentioned in my weekly e-column. (For example, you can use Google as a dictionary by typing “define:ersatz,” or whatever.)

But here’s a nice, tidy list of all of them in one place, some of which are new to me. Bookmark this baby!

–David Pogue, New York Times technical specialist blog, June 2005

Nancy Blachman’s Google Guide is by far the best guide to using Google, for beginners & more intermediate users, that I’ve seen so far. I see great potential here for plopping patrons down with this self-guided tutorial, instead of the 20 minute “This is Google, this is how you search” lecture.

The absolutely best tutorial on how to use all of Google’s potential. Easy to use, simple to navigate, this is a little jewel for both the novice and advanced search user. The definitive up-to-date guide on how to best leverage the Google search engine and all of its features in a simple and easy to access format. Recommended.

[Google Guide] is easy and intuitive to navigate, enables users of varying skill levels to skip or choose parts of the tutorial at will, and seems very comprehensive, especially with your “new features” page that you keep updated. Do you think Google would put a link to your tutorial on their page?

The fact that Nancy has been teaching Internet novices is apparent. She takes nothing for granted, and even includes tips on how to navigate a Web page. More savvy users may skip those sections, however, and focus on the practical examples and exercises.

She is very thorough, and includes introductions to advanced Boolean searching, as well as many of the additional features available at Google, including everything from Froogle shopping search to the Google toolbar.

Nancy points out that putting a tilde in front of a search term (with no space in between) effectively turns that term into any of its synonyms: “The tilde is known as the synonym operator. So, if you search for “Google ~Guide,” Google will find Google Guide as well as other Google tutorials.”

It is tips like this one that make the Google ~Guide so useful. Yes, you may search Google right away, without reading any introduction or FAQs, but that is like looking at only one of the channels available on your TV or driving your car in the first gear only.

While the Google search instruction page is helpful, it’s a rather bare bones approach, and your guide fills in the gaps. … By having this tutorial available, you’ve saved folks lots of time trying to explain the search process. I’m glad your guide is available now and will recommend it to anyone new to the internet. I wish it had been available 5 years ago when I was a newbie.

I adore Google. Period. I use it each time I need to search some stuff on the Net and it turns up the most wondrous results so I was truly happy to know that there is something better than Google … Google Guide! Yep, it teaches you all the tips and tricks … so you’ll be able to search even better! Thank God for Google Guide!

Today I came across a really great guide for using Google. www.googleguide.com explains how google works including what tricks to use to find what you want from the simple (use words you expect to see in the page) to the complex (search for pages on slashdot.org using the site:slashdot.org operator). Even though I’ve been using google for years, and use complex operators all the time, even I learned a few tricks from this guide.

If you, or someone you know, has trouble getting good search results, show them this guide. It should really help make their lives better.

GoogleGuide looks like a potentially useful web-based tutorial for teaching students to search with Google… Note that it’s available under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 license, which means maybe we should rework it as a Google tutorial module … … [T]he nice thing is that a teacher can feel welcome to modify this tutorial for use with their classes. We need more open content tutorials such as this.

3. What Can You Find with Google?

Google strives to make it easy to quickly find what you’re
seeking. The following list shows some of the many types of
searches Google can easily do.
Click on the type of information to learn how to search for it
and click on the examples to see the results of such a search.